Guwahati: Assam witnessed a revolutionary milestone in sugarcane production with the recent installation of India’s first boilerless sugarcane processing plant at Bamungaon near Lanka in the Hojai district of the State.
Sources stated that the Punjab-based Spray Engineering Devices Limited (SEDL) and Ecotech Agro Mills, developed the plant, setting a new standard for sustainable agro-industrial technology.
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According to the officials of SEDL, the plant with a crushing capacity of 500 tonnes per day (TCD) processes sugarcane into high-quality jaggery without generating any smoke, steam, or industrial waste, eliminating the need to burn bagasse to power boilers, making the system fuel-free.
The officials stated that the system requires no fossil fuel and is 100 percent carbon neutral.
“Since its installation, the boilerless plant has demonstrated its efficiency by processing over 1.8 lakh tonnes of sugarcane annually, resulting in an estimated saving of 60,000 tonnes of bagasse”, the official asserted.
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The official further stated that the authority has been planning to scale up the plant’s capacity up to 750 TCD, with sugarcane cultivation expanding across 800 bighas of nearby farmland to ensure a consistent supply.
Notably, Assam has been cultivating sugarcanes over 29,000 hectares of land, with a potential to produce 1.35 lakh tonnes of jaggery annually.
However, the absence of viable processing units has forced the state to depend on jaggery and sugar imports from other regions.